Author: Andrew Sullivan

 
A reader writes:

You wrote:

Now think of what this foretells: a baseej is cornered, switches sides and is carried aloft in the streets triumphantly.

Unfortunately, that doesn't say much to me.  That says that a man was heavily intimidated, became afraid of what an angry crowd might do to him, and decided to momentarily join them.  This man was part of a group that is murdering people in the streets.  Do you think all it took to convert him was a nice conversation with a crowd?  No way.  If those images do in fact show a defection, they're only to cover his own ass in that moment.

Show me images of groups of Baseej putting down their guns as they approach a crowd.  Show me someone unafraid for their life defecting.  Show me Baseej fighting Baseej.  That will be a defection. This?  This is cowardice.  Maybe I'm wrong (god willing, I am), but that's how it looks to me.

Another writes:

I'm one of the tweeters posting with the IranRiggedElect id. Considering the uniforms featured in your post, the forces are very likely not Basij. Basij usually don't wear professional uniforms like these. Amir Farsahd Ebrahimi, who is a former insider, gives a summary of different uniforms and corresponding forces here (in Farsi). If I'm not mistaken, Iran's official forces are a military, a police and an IRGC which has both a police branch and a military branch.

The basij are an additional unofficial force but the IRGC, faced with a need for manpower in the post-election unrest has repeatedly talked about plans to integrate the basij into the IRGC. In instances we have seen the basij wear vests to indicate their identity but most of the time they wear normal clothes with a religious touch and we call them "plainclothes". One particular day when the basij seemed to have been given vests was June 20, 2009 (see video here).

So my conclusion is that the forces that are seen in the December 27 video wearing anti-riot gear are NOT basij. They are either normal riot police or IRGC riot police. Why is it significant to make such a distinction?

Because the basij is a very ideological, unofficial, mostly voluntary group who may get paid on a case by case basis if necessary. They fight because they believe they are the soldiers of God and they are willing to sacrifice their lives. Whereas anti-riot forces, whether IRGC or not, are paid professionals who get a salary. They are less ideological than the basij. Much less ideological if they are with normal police rather than IRGC. They are the most likely to be looking for excuses not to hit people.

However, they are still very terrified of what would happen to them if they were to be caught on camera "converting" to green with uniform. I have seen the video of that incident and it is by no means showing a conversion. It is showing a desperate riot policeman trying to please the mob in a way that looks good enough for them to let him go free and yet "forced" enough for him to be able to tell his seniors "they forced me". He is aiming for this balance and not really joining the people. He might do that some day when he's not wearing his uniform. But with his uniform it would cost him his life.

Update at the Corner: still no mention of events in Iran, apart from Jonah's pathetic sentence yesterday. Too busy trying to score cheap points off Obama. Ah, conservatism today.

It's a big deal as an Iranian reader explains:

At 3 AM this morning they arrested Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, he is one of the most seasoned politicians in all of Iran. Foreign Minster to the transitional government of the revolution, he resigned along side the cabinet at the wake of the hostage crisis . He is the leader of one of Iran's oldest political parties, the "freedom movement".

This is a party formed by allies of Dr. Mosadeq in 1953 and Mehdi Bzaragan, the first prime minister of the revolution. Although mainly an older men's club, it had a symbolic relevance and it was less involved with the day to day politics the way reformist parties have been engaged in.

He is 72 and has been struggling with cancer for a few years now. What does this arrest mean? Where are they going with this? Yazdi is perhaps the most known Iranian opposition figure internationally. Many foreign ministers and international dignitaries have good personal relationship with him.

If you're just tuning in and bewildered by the amount of material on the Dish about the latest events in Iran, all we can suggest is that you catch up by going back to the first post on Saturday night, and clicking forward through the cascading, successive events.

One thing a chronological blog can convey is a sense of passing time, of how events can galvanize each other, how small moments of tension can slowly grow into major crises. It was clear to me that something was deeply awry when I saw the video of Khatami's speech being surrounded by brownshirt militia. Go watch that scene: you will feel the chill of terror and tyranny in that room. From then on, moment by moment, the emotional wave moved forward. It cannot be summarized, because it was history.

Start here if you want to capture its flavor – raw, unconfirmed, chaotic but real flavor. Exercize skepticism: sometimes even what you see with your bare eyes is misleading. But it unfolds like a movie. Start here.

For me, the iconic image – of so many – is the one at the top of this post: a baseej switching sides and being carried aloft by the crowd. Proof of this can be found here. And my favorite quote of the day is a simple one, the kind that a New Yorker might make:

"Are you only brave on your motorbike, you piece of shit?!"

There are two critical lines that were crossed yesterday. The first was widespread savagery and violence by the junta on the day of Ashura. This breaks a profound taboo, violates the integrity and core meaning of the religious festival, and places the regime symbolically as the enemy of Shia Islam. This has offended not just the urban elites but the pious poor and rural population. Unrest was all over the country yesterday:

The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime … Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.

The second was the calculated assassination of Ali Mousavi, the rightful president's nephew. This creates a martyr connected to the leader of the Green Movement, and provides a cycle of more mourning and potential for unrest. That may explain the following troubling news:

A relative of Iran's opposition leader says the body of the leader's nephew has been removed from a hospital without the family's permission, a day after he was slain in an anti-government protest. Reza Mousavi said Monday that the body of his brother, Ali Mousavi, was taken from a Tehran hospital, possibly by authorities seeking to deter mourners from organizing more protests around his funeral.

With each violation of basic Muslim norms, the regime is revealing itself as a military junta, using religion purely as a means to retain power. Which is what always happens in theocracy. Total power does not feed faith; it destroys it. And then that corrupted faith wages war on its enemies.

There is more at stake here than simply one country. We are seeing the two great forces of our time – fundamentalism and freedom – fight for humanity's soul.

It's a long list:

Ebrahim Yazdi (former Foreign Minister)
Emad-e’Din Baghi (Human Rights Activist)
Morteza Hadji (Minister of educaion during Khatami era)
Leila Tavassoli, daughter of Mohammad Tavassoli
Seyed Hosein Mousavi Tabrizi (Head of the clerical Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qom)
Alireza Beheshti Shirazi (Editor in Chief of Mousavi’s online journal Kalameh Sabz)
Ghorban Behzadian Nejad (Mousavi consultant)
Mohamad Bagherian (Mousavi consultant)
Rasouli (deputy of President Khatami’s Baran Foundation)
Forouzandeh (Manager of Mousavi’s office)
Mohammad Sadegh Rabbani (retired university professor who used to be the general prosecutor 20 years ago, arrested yesterday 27 December)
Mohammad Moin (son of former Presidential candidate Mostafa Moin, the former Minister of Science and higher education, arrested 27 December)
Heshmatollah Tabarzadi (Student Activist)
Haleh Sahabi (Women’s Rights activist)

Goldblog reads the new airport security guidelines:

Thanks for letting us know, TSA, that the search should be focused on the upper legs and torso. As I've said on numerous occasions, pat-downs that ignore the crotch and the ass are useless. We recently saw in Saudi Arabia the detonation of a rectal bomb, so it really doesn't take much creativity to imagine that terrorists will be taping explosives to their scrotums. Of course, TSA is not going to be feeling-up people's scrotums anytime soon, so the question remains: Why does our government continue to make believe that it can stop terrorists from boarding civilian planes when anyone with half-a-brain and a spare two minutes can think up a dozen ways to bypass the symbolic security measures at our airports?

"I remember you asked me back in January if I loved my guy. And in light of all that's happened in this first year, I still do. Even more so. And I also have a strong sense—based not just on polls but on a lot of folks I've talked to who don't always pay attention to politics—that he DOES have that base of people who still love him too. It's hard to detect, because the part of the 'base' that's represented on cable and on blogs is so vocal (and by vocal I mean shrill), but it's there. I also read it in the letters he gets. Some of them are amazingly poignant and appreciative of what he's done and what he's doing. Some of them are tough—very tough—but still respectful and hopeful that he's doing the right thing. Even if they're unsure right now, they want him to succeed. . ." – an Obama administration worker who feels as I do about this president.

The head of DHS had the gall to say that "the system worked." What she meant is that after the incident in Detroit, the response was good. Fine. But she has no assurance that this could not happen again, and even declared that the would-be terrorist was properly screened.

More to the point, she evinces no sense of responsibility for this lapse in security. I'm sorry but that's her job and instead of preening about how she handled it after the fact, she should be apologizing for yet another instance of government incompetence and complacency. She is stonewalling and smug.

Really: disgraceful, glib, complacent, moronic. I want to know who is being fired for not taking the warning about this ooon seriously enough, and if Napolitano really believes that a near-miss, averted by the terrorist's incompetence and the passengers' courage, is a sign that the system is working, then she needs to be fired as well.

I understand the imperative to remain calm, not give these incidents more media oxygen than they deserve, not responding with hysteria or panic. But this interview went far too far in the opposite direction. She sounded like Brownie during Katrina. I have no confidence in her as head of DHS if this is her attitude. It's reminiscent of the Bush-Cheney years: arrogance and a refusal to take responsibility.

Jersey City, New Jersey, 6.39 am